Ocula | South Asian Art Platform KALĀ Announces Inaugural Exhibition

December 19, 2023

New art platform KALĀ has announced details of its inaugural exhibition, Pivot. Glide. Echo., and additional programming developed in association with the Lionel Wendt Art Centre.

Curated by KALĀ Assistant Curator Mariyam Begum under the guidance of KALĀ Curatorial Advisor Sandhini Poddar, Adjunct Curator at Large of the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, the exhibition brings together works by 19 Sri Lankan artists spanning eight decades.

The curators took the practice of Sri Lankan photographer Lionel Wendt (1900–1944) as a point of departure for the exhibition, which delves into the relationship between the image-making process and technology.

‘Lionel Wendt is pivotal to Sri Lankan and South Asian art history,’ Begum explained. ‘Although his career as a visual artist was brief—from the 1930s to 1944—in the short span that he was active, he had a very versatile and prolific practice that engaged with very diverse themes, one that was not defined or confined by the exploration of a very specific idea.’

Begum said Wendt’s ‘futuristic’ practice allowed for meaningful dialogues with other artists’ works.

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